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Israel continuous construction of settlements is hard blow to political

process - UN chief By Omar Al-Halabi BEIRUT, Nov 29 (KUNA) -- Secretary General of United Nations (UN) Ban Ki-Moon said Monday that Israel sustained construction of settlements deals a hard blow to the credibility of the Middle East peace process, calling on the Palestinians, in another vein, to reconcile.
The previous remark were made by Ban in a message that was read by UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon Michael Williams at the opening of a meeting that was called upon by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) in cooperation with the UN Human Rights Committee on the occasion of International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People with the participation of a number of officials and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
Ban said in his message that that 2011 will see two momentous dates, first the commitment made by both Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for making efforts toward reaching a framework agreement on the final status by next September, and the second is that the Palestinian National Authority is on right track toward finalizing by next August its two-year plan in preparation for establishing the Palestinian state.
However, he said that neither he nor the Palestinians are feeling optimistic on making any achievement next year, saying that Israel embarked upon constructing hundreds of new settlement units all over the West Bank and gave new approvals for building settlements in East Jerusalem.
Ban also such development deals a hard blow to the credibility of the political process, "calling on Israel to freeze its settlement activity and to abide by its responsibility by virtue of the international law and the Roadmap Peace Plan." He also expressed his hopes that the next year, "will be the year in which we will achieve at last a just and durable peace in the Middle East based on the Security Council resolutions 242, 338, 1397,1515 and 1850 as well as the previous peace accords, Madrid framework of action, Roadmap and the Arab Peace Initiative." Meanwhile, Executive Secretary of ESCWA Rima Khalaf said that, "Israel's belittling of international law started since of the first day of establishing its state when it went beyond the borders provided for it according to the UN General Assembly 181 in 1947 and seized the territories by force in 1967 through its occupation of all Palestinian lands to subject a whole people to an obnoxious occupation that runs counter to the minimal rules of ethics approved by the humanity." As for adviser at Palestine embassy in Lebanon Hassan Shashna Fadan, he condemned in a statement to KUNA that the Israeli acts against 8,ooo Palestinian prisoners who are hunkering down in the Israeli jails and are exposed to the most horrendous forms of torment.
In the same vein, Shashna revealed big medical abuses on the part of the Israeli authorities against a number of the Palestinian prisoners including experimenting new drugs on them." He also said that, "there are medical experiments conducted by Israel on detainees inside jails of Oufer and Beer sheba ," asserting that a number of prisoners died as a result of these experiments, while several other were paralyzed. The UN General Assembly decided in 1977 to devote the 29th of November of every year a day for solidarity with the Palestinian people. (end) oh.aff KUNA 300112 Nov 10NNNN